My profession is a network engineer. A network engineer is responsible for not only designing, building and implementing complex networks but also fixing those networks when their performance is degraded or completely broken. As you can imagine my field requires a lot of problem solving skills, both in designing networks to solve business problems and also in troubleshooting problems in existing networks.
My early training consisted in a lot of problem solving techniques; how to rapidly isolate a problem and determine its impact and also in how to quickly break a problem apart and arrive at the solution through logical sequences of determining the root cause of the problem. Network engineers use something called the ISO model, which is a layered model representative of all computer and network operations ranging from layer one, a physical cable all the way to layer seven which is the application layer (such as an issue with a web browser). By using this tool an engineer can quickly determine that if a computer has a physical network connection yet the computer at the far end isn’t receiving the data then the problem resides at layer two through four and can then begin appropriate troubleshooting and diagnostic techniques to further isolate and resolve the problem.
The first employer I had in this profession always paired a senior engineer with a junior engineer. The idea was that a senior engineer could mentor the junior engineer and the junior engineer could benefit and learn from the senior engineer. The first jobs I was assigned was deploying a new core network for one of our large clients. The senior engineer and I arrived at the customer location late one Saturday night and began replacing the appropriate network equipment. After we were finished, the new core was not working properly and we began troubleshooting the problem. After spending many hours of troubleshooting with the senior engineer taking the lead we were no closer to solving the problem. I then began breaking the problem apart using my newly learned skills. I started at the first layer of the ISO model and replaced the network cable. Sure enough the network started working properly and all of the issues we were experiencing in the new core vanished. Why is it a seasoned senior engineer with over ten years of experience failed to solve a problem after several hours and me, a brand new engineer solved it in five minutes? I believe two things are a factor in this, fixation and experts knowledge.
In our text fixation is defined as people’s tendency to focus on one aspect of a problem and thus keeps them from arriving at a solution. (Goldstein, 2011, p. 329) I believe the senior engineer had fixated on the network portion of the problem and was so focused on trying to fix the network portion that he completely missed the fact that a simple cable could be the cause. In our text we learned that, according to research an expert in an area will generally arrive at the solution of a problem in that area faster than a novice. (Goldstein, 2011, p. 347) I feel there are some inherent issues however with this type of problem solving, one which led to the senior engineer’s inability to effectively isolate the root cause of our network problem. I think the senior engineer had a vast amount of knowledge and experience in our field, I also think that he was used to focusing on high level issues with networks. Generally something like a cable issue would be handled by lower level engineers or interns. By the time a senior engineer is called in to solve a problem it has usually been determined to be a very high level complex issue. I think that due to this the senior engineer generally disregarded lower level problems and his troubleshooting steps generally began at a higher level. This type of problem solving became the norm for him and it took a novice to look at the full scope of the problem and isolate the issue.
References
Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research and Everyday Experience. Belmont: Cengage.
Having worked in the IT field for 32 years I really enjoyed reading your Network problem solving post. I can remember back when a Network was just an IBM Mainframe with a bunch of “dumb” terminals attached to it, that and struggling to get a dozen 80286 DOS-based PCs to talk to a 80386 file server running Novell over ARCNET.
I think you’re right on with the assessment of the problem regarding your Senior Network Engineer. As with Dunckers candle problem from our textbook, your Senior Engineer was so used to solving high end Networking issues that he saw all Network problems with the same Functional Fixedness (Goldstein 329). He couldn’t fathom cable issues because this rarely occurs at the high end of Network troubleshooting. His experience predisposed him to seek the answer that he was more familiar with, thus he was caught in the availability heuristic, expecting what he recalled from past experiences (Goldstein 369-370). He also fixated on the representativeness heuristic, trying to make your problem resemble another similar ones (Goldstein 371-372).
But your Senior Network Engineer’s biggest obstacle to solving the problem was the Confirmation Bias (Goldstein 374) . He came in expecting a complicated issue and could not be convinced it was otherwise. In our textbook Wason and Lord showed that this kind of thinking is a “major roadblock” to reasoning (Goldstein 374-375). Selectively picking and choosing facts to fit our already established beliefs make us inflexible and close minded. Is it any wonder those boneheads in Washington are always so deadlocked, neither side really hears a word that that the other is saying.
Bill Carvalho
Having worked in the IT field for 32 years I really enjoyed reading your Network problem solving post. I can remember back when a Network was just an IBM Mainframe with a bunch of “dumb” terminals attached to it, that and struggling to get a dozen 80286 DOS-based PCs to talk to a 80386 file server running Novell over ARCNET.
I think you’re right on with the assessment of the problem regarding your Senior Network Engineer. As with Dunckers candle problem from our textbook, your Senior Engineer was so used to solving high end Networking issues that he saw all Network problems with the same Functional Fixedness (Goldstein 329). He couldn’t fathom cable issues because this rarely occurs at the high end of Network troubleshooting. His experience predisposed him to seek the answer that he was more familiar with, thus he was caught in the availability heuristic, expecting what he recalled from past experiences (Goldstein 369-370). He also fixated on the representativeness heuristic, trying to make your problem resemble another similar ones (Goldstein 371-372).
But your Senior Network Engineer’s biggest obstacle to solving the problem was the Confirmation Bias (Goldstein 374) . He came in expecting a complicated issue and could not be convinced it was otherwise. In our textbook Wason and Lord showed that this kind of thinking is a “major roadblock” to reasoning (Goldstein 374-375). Selectively picking and choosing facts to fit our already established beliefs make us inflexible and close minded. Is it any wonder those boneheads in Washington are always so deadlocked, neither side really hears a word that that the other is saying.
Bill Carvalho